The CATCHer That Got Away

Phillies.com posted a video of Ruben Amaro answering questions from seasons ticket holders via Tom McCarthy and most of the questions got a standard, friendly non-answer. Then, Ruben dished on the guys behind the dish.

Q: “Of all the young players you’ve traded away over the last five years, if you could have one of them back, who would it be?”

A: “I would say, because of the lack of depth in this area, I would say Travis D’Arnaud, probably one of the better catchers in all of baseball, it really hurt when we moved him… when you’re moving young talent, you try to stay out of the middle of the field, (C, SS, CF), because those can be the backbone of your club.

We had to put him in the deal to make it happen. At the time it was more of a decision between D’Arnaud and Brown, and while we like both guys a lot, we thought that Brown was closest and the guy that would make more impact on us at that time. And we decided to go with D’Arnaud and I’d like to have him back, he’s a good one.”

Later in the interview…

Q: “What does the Phillies pipeline at Catcher look like?”

A: “The next guy I think that has a very good chance to be a major leaguer is Sebastian Valle. He’s a young man who we just put on the roster, he’s from Mexico… he’s developing as a catcher, he’s got great power, what we like about him is that he’s improved his catching skills year in and year out, and he’s got a lot of power potential. You don’t have that combination very often at that position. As long as he continues to develop his defensive skills, he’s got a strong arm, he’s still learning to work with pitchers, still learning to be quiet behind the plate, as long as he continues to develop on that side of the ball, he’s got a chance to be a front line catcher.”

Read into it what you will, but does it seem like he wishes that Brown was gone, and that D’Arnaud were here instead? Or just that he still wishes he had D’Arnaud? Is there any truth to the rumors from a few weeks ago that the Phillies are interested in reacquiring D’Arnaud? Or was that just the Phillies doing their due diligence and checking in on the best players in baseball?

It was interesting to me that Amaro was willing to give definitive answers to the questions above instead of the typical, “We’d love to have all of those guys back, but we realize you have to give up talent to get talent in return.” Despite our best wishes, Carlos Ruiz can’t play forever… wonder what happens next.